


Secondary Hours

by murg



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Terminal Illnesses, Unresolved Emotional Tension, it's real hinata angst hours, post-dr3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 03:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16802482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murg/pseuds/murg
Summary: When they lie together, Hajime feels like Komaeda can smell every sin on his breath.





	Secondary Hours

“We could go to the park,” Komaeda murmurs, voice soft in the dim twilight. Against the window, he looks like an opaque specter perched above the radiator. Komaeda is sickly, ugly in the daytime, but the half-light gives him a certain quality. Colored in fleeting pinks and oranges, here and gone within an hour, this is his element. All the dips and hollows of his sallow skin gain new shadows, filling him out into something unearthly.

It’s hard to tear his eyes away from, but Hajime does. He always does. He unloops his tie and leans down to tug his shoelaces. “I don’t know if it’s safe,” he says. “There’ve been new Monokuma unit sightings.”

Komaeda hums, tapping against the weak plaster of the wall. “You’re right. It would be terrible if my carelessness got you hurt.”

‘Carelessness’ is just a euphemism. After two tense months together, Hajime had finally snapped and banned any use of one particular word in their drafty household. Komaeda has adapted spectacularly, as he has to any and every other event in his life. He curls his tongue around different words now, spitting them out with the same fervor and intention. It makes Hajime angrier than the old talk did, but he knows he can’t go back. He’s the one who made the rule, after all. He can see Komaeda’s eyes, if he were to go back on it, how they’d glitter with satisfaction, some sadistic mirth, while nodding his head demurely in assent.

“Though I suppose you could handle them,” he continues, tilting his head to look outside with a thoughtful expression. Hajime tears his eyes away again, unbuttoning his shirt. “That would be within your skillset?”

The way Komaeda cants his voice--he’s trying to get a rise out of him. It’s depressingly predictable. Komaeda is, in this sense, intensely boring.

Hajime flinches, sitting down hard on the couch. Its springs squeal in protest. He takes a deep breath and holds it, smoothing out his thoughts until they’re fine and floating. He feels like a balloon being held underwater. He releases, and he’s fine. Above water and breathing easily.

“Hinata?” He hears Komaeda’s voice, but he doesn’t look up. He continues to unbutton his shirt, fingers inhumanly steady. That’s fine, though. It isn’t something that needs to upset him. He can observe it, acknowledge the reason, and let that go. Komaeda’s body shifts, the buttons on the back of his jeans scraping against the peeling paint of the window sill. “Ah. I would like to go outside, though... Someday? Maybe.”

“We went out half a week ago,” he grunts, sliding his button-down off of his shoulders and folding it in his lap.

“Ah ha. Yes. We did. I’m sorry, Hinata. My memory is so rotten, you know. I’m so...fortunate to have you here.”

He grimaces. That’s another word to strike out. It’s too similar. Same meaning. Komaeda must notice his expression, because he makes a soft sound of discontentment.

“I’m sorry, Hinata,” he says. “Awful memory. But maybe I should stop making so many excuses.”

Maybe, he almost replies. But he doesn’t. If he stops affording Komaeda excuses, he’ll have to stop affording himself the same. That’s not possible, not at the present time. Hajime’s held together entirely by excuses and shoddy intentions, right now.

If he had a stronger moral fiber, he wouldn’t be here with Komaeda. They’re both too desperate to take advantage of one another, in their separate fashions. He knows exactly where they both should be--back on Jabberwock, submitting themselves to physical and psychological evaluation with the others. Komaeda should be in a hospital, with a saline IV drip. He sweats so much and he hardly eats. He’s terribly dehydrated. He won’t drink, though; he feels bloated and uncomfortable too often. Hajime could make him drink, but he doesn’t. Is he a bad person, not making Komaeda drink?

“We can go out tomorrow,” he says, “but not to the park.”

Jabberwock was unsustainable, anyways. Komaeda couldn’t stand to be cooped up, especially with people whom he could _hurt_ so easily just by breathing. And Hajime, well. Hajime... The island was too stifling for him, too mundane, too little content or activity, waking up to the same scenery again and again and again, it just...

Maybe they should have two banned words, in this crumbling alcove. One for Komaeda and one for him.

They fled from Eden together, and and this is where they’ve ended up. Shattered buildings, bad air, rotted food and no company but each other. This is what they chose. Komaeda, for all his failings, at least acted in the interest of others. Hinata can’t even pretend to have done the same. There are ugly, miserable thoughts in his mind that drive him forward now. Itches on his brain that expand into rashes, until they overtake him and he’s numb inside and out. He wonders how long it’ll take until he tires of Komaeda. He dreads it with an intense fervor.

It would be so wrong. Especially now. Especially in these temporary hours.

Komaeda is an ethereal creature in the dying sunlight. Hajime’s eyes prickle, wondering how many times he may have seen him like this and felt nothing. Intensely unaffected by anything, like his bones had been soaked in novocaine. He really was such a disgusting creature, wasn’t he? Maybe he still is. He still is that creature. He both is and isn’t. With and without. Hajime floats in Schrödinger’s box, too afraid to lift the lid and peek outside. He doesn’t want to know who he’ll see in the mirror, if he ever does.

“It’d be nice to go to the park,” Komaeda says, dangling his arm over the window sill. “The flowers still grow there, despite the decay surrounding them. It makes my heart flutter, knowing that they’re persevering.” The flower are wilted, twisted weeds between the cracked concrete walkways. “Ah, I’m straying into nonsense, aren’t I? I always get so talkative around this time, haha. I’m so sorry.”

Don’t be sorry, he wants to say. I hate you, I hate what you’ve done, but you’re the only human voice I hear anymore. And I love your voice. It’s soft and airy, like a winter breeze. It bites at my insides until I ache, but it isn’t bad. It isn’t bad at all. “If you like flowers so much, you should have stayed back with the others,” he grunts.

A light laugh. There’s an edge to it, though, sharp and subtle. “I can’t help it. You should know how I am, by now.”

He does and he doesn’t. It’s beyond frustrating. Komaeda is a Gordian knot of warring qualities. Even in his calmest moments, he seems impossible to unravel. Hajime knows he could take a scalpel and cut through him without too much effort. It's a slimy, disturbing undercurrent that drips out of his skin in the form of sweat, staining his clothes. He could do it. He could. He could.

“I do like the park, though. It’s the prettiest thing around here, and I appreciate pretty things. It would be nice. That’s just what I think. But I’ve learned not to expect much.”

It always makes Hajime angry, when he hears Komaeda talk like that. Another part of him squirms at the words, anguished. He wishes that Komaeda didn’t always have to turn everything into some disaster. He wishes, more than anything, that Komaeda didn’t feel like he had to.

There are lists of “the right thing to say” stamped across his brain, but he’s tried several dozen already and none of them net any real results. Komaeda just gives him a patient, amused smile. It makes him ravenously angry, angry enough to want to grab his face and press until Komaeda squirms and squeals for mercy. Except he knows Komaeda would never ask for mercy; Komaeda knows he doesn’t deserve mercy. It’s a creeping, cold horror in his veins. It douses the anger into something more manageable.

Hajime has never laid his hands on Komaeda with the intention to harm, not that he can remember. Even if it’s selfish, he’d prefer to keep it that way. He doesn’t want to remember anything like that. He’s positive he must have, in his...other life. Probably just to see what Komaeda would do, if he did. No other reason.

“Maybe you should,” he snaps, before he can think.

Komaeda hums, cocking his head.

“Start expecting much,” he adds weakly, twisting away to roll out the futon.

Komaeda doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t care to look back and see what face he’s making. If he’s making one at all. Post-simulation, Komaeda can be distressingly reticent about his feelings. It’s far more aggravating than when he wears his heart on his sleeve.

“Mm. I prefer to hope for little things for myself,” Komaeda settles on. “That gives me more space to hope for bigger things for everyone else.”

Hope isn’t a limited resource, he wants to hiss at him. It’s not like crude oil or money or the drugs I should be administering to you. I could _fix_ you, with the right material. I know I could. But I _don’t._ I don’t do it. Why don’t I do it? Why do I have to be so afraid? Why do I prioritize myself over you?

“Hinata,” Komaeda says gently.

He shakes his head, forming his lips into a straight line.

The sun’s set now. Komaeda is a dark shadow by the hole in the wall they call a window. He’s like a large insect, spindly and looming, when he stands up and stretches. He’s ugly, again. The thing of Hajime’s nightmares, a dehydrated demented mess of a human creature, tugging on his hair and crying into his lap, smearing snot all over his neatly pressed suit pants. The sight leaves him unmoved, inert, numb. Komaeda is a ball of raw, cataclysmic human suffering, and he means nothing. An insect. An overgrown insect.

Hajime shivers, skin clammy. He prefers the in-between hours, when he can stand to look at Komaeda.

Komaeda inclines his head, eyes glittering in the darkness. He sees something, something Hinata can’t see. He sees something the other boy would never be able to see, either. Komaeda, spindly and terrible in the darkness, is a mad oracle. “Pity,” he huffs, voice soft and poisonous. But he doesn’t say anything else.

Hajime pulls out the moth-bitten blanket and spreads it out across the futon, spraying dust into the air. Once it settles, he clambers onto it and slips beneath the threadbare covering, settling his head against the corner. Pity. The word flits about his brain, a word without qualification. The two layers of his stinking brain offer up no explanation.

Komaeda’s unreadable face rises above him, expression sharp and intense. Curious. He wonders what Komaeda is curious about. It is so easy to forget that the most dangerous aspect of Komaeda isn’t his misplaced passions, but his vicious intelligence. As vulnerable as he is, he isn’t a prey animal. Is that Hajime’s thought or the other his thought? Both. Neither. He’s only one person, after all. He can’t help but feel like a chimera, split down the middle, though. Komaeda is still looking at him. He wonders if he senses his weakness, if he can smell it on him like Hajime can smell his illness.

He closes his eyes, hearing the rustling of Komaeda’s clothing. The click of his prosthetic arm against the floorboards as he gets on his knees. The lift of the blanket as he rolls beside him. The wet heat of his mouth, lightly brushing his forehead.

When they lie together, Hajime feels like Komaeda can smell every sin on his breath. Every weakness and failing in his rattled skull. He’s a two-headed boy, both brains reeking of selfishness.

Komaeda also seems like two people, though, doesn’t he? The Komaeda that exists in the day and night and the Komaeda that lives in the between hours. The Komaeda that asks to go to the park, instead of holding his tongue and only offering illegible smirks. The Komaeda that Hajime finds it difficult to deny. It’s something. He isn’t sure what, but it is something. Part of him wants to crack that Komaeda open and climb inside of him, live encased in his skeleton, nestled right by his shimmering lungs, breathing in the putrid scent of sickness. It’s a destructive, horrific desire to understand him. It frightens Hajime. Komaeda brings things out in him that he can’t properly explain.

A lifetime ago, he may have even found it interesting.


End file.
